On Iraq question, wisdom needed as much as spy photos

WASHINGTON — The arguments are apparently fierce within the Bush administration over how much intelligence information about Iraq's weapons programs Secretary of State Colin Powell will be permitted to share with the Security Council next week. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that Powell is "working furiously to get a higher level of declassification."

The continuing tension between government secrecy and democracy dates to passage of the Espionage Act in 1917, which made it a crime to disclose classified defense information. The end of the Cold War prompted leading figures, such as former Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, to question whether the government's secrecy mania was self-defeating. That debate, of course, abruptly ended with the Sept. 11 attacks, which prompted a clampdown on the free flow of information out of legitimate concern over aiding terrorists.

But even now, striking the proper balance between truth-telling and national security represents a tricky challenge. Agencies like the CIA zealously guard their findings for fear that any public release will jeopardize intelligence agents and reveal the extent of our data-collecting prowess. But taken to an extreme, that approach would leave Powell in the ludicrous position of telling the Security Council, "We know for sure that Saddam Hussein is hiding his weapons programs. But we can't reveal to you why we know that."

For months in building its case against Iraq, the administration has released selected nuggets of intelligence data. In a pivotal speech last Oct. 7, as Congress began debating the Iraqi resolution, George W. Bush declared, "Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of his nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted the purchase of high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

(It is worth noting what the president did not mention in that speech: a few days earlier, North Korea had announced to an American envoy that it had been secretly resuming its nuclear-weapons program. That revelation was only shared with Congress after it had given Bush the authorization he sought to move against Iraq.)

Bush's assertions in October about Iraq's drive to acquire nuclear weapons were questioned Monday in a report to the Security Council by Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency. After scrutinizing Iraq's suspect nuclear sites, ElBaradei declared, "No prohibited nuclear activities have been identified during these inspections."

Uncertainty also exists about Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubing. ElBaradei said that Iraq claimed the tubes were destined for conventional rockets. As the chief nuclear weapons inspector put it, "It appears that the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges."

ElBaradei emphasized that this was a preliminary evaluation. "We are still investigating this issue," he said.

The point here is not to build a defense brief for Saddam as a peace-loving leader with a peculiar fixation for aluminum tubing. Rather it is to illustrate the slippery, difficult-to-interpret nature of even the best intelligence information. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has acknowledged, "It's possible we have been misinformed on some things. In a country that has a history of constructing Potemkin villages, there's absolutely no way to know whether what the inspectors were shown were indeed those aluminum tubes that we're concerned about or whether it was a whole facade."

Similarly, Armitage, in Thursday's congressional testimony, stressed the likelihood that the tubes were intended for nuclear-weapons production, but conceded, "Perhaps we miscalculated."

It seems obvious to everyone, save perhaps French and German diplomats, that Saddam has flagrantly violated the terms of Security Council resolutions with respect to his stocks of chemical and biological weapons. But the urgency of the drive to dislodge the Iraqi leader largely flows from the threat that he will acquire nuclear weapons. Even the most outspoken anti-war critics do not relish the prospect of Iraq proudly taking a seat at the next meeting of the nuclear club. But as we are seemingly just weeks away from war, the question remains: How much time do we have before there is a realistic risk that Saddam will have the bomb?

That brings us back to the knotty dilemma of the reliability of intelligence information and the difficulty in interpreting it. It is quite possible that America possesses undisclosed but ironclad evidence of the current extent of Saddam's nuclear program. Powell may be permitted to use these findings in presenting his case to the Security Council if he can win the battle inside the administration for candor over secrecy. But intelligence material is rarely as definitive as the satellite pictures that Adlai Stevenson dramatically displayed before the United Nations during the Cuban missile crisis.

The decision to go to war should not be shrouded in ambiguity.

receive the latest by email: subscribe to walter shapiro's free mailing list